Grey dawn rising: Are David Bowie, Johnny Marr and other rock and roll wrinklies taking over again?

Where are the modern equivalents rising up like rotten mushrooms to punch the establishment – and Bowie fans – on their bloated old noses?

Where Are We Now (with the state of music?): Bowie came back, seems unlikely that many of today's artists will do the same

I am 42.

I probably shouldn’t still be looking at NME, but I do have the odd flick through my daughter’s copy. However I do believe that life was better in the ‘good old days’ (70s onwards for me) because I was young then, and therefore the music I liked – good and bad – was stimulating a highly impressionable and innocent mind.

That said, by comparison, modern rock and roll is very, very boring and could have been produced during many of the previous decades. It’s safe and derivative. The Horrors last album was Simple Minds. The Vaccines look like junior solicitors. A headline on NME.com this week: “Everything Everything offer free gig tickets to help find their missing cat.”

I wonder whether young people now, will be waxing lyrical about 2013 in 2040? I don’t think they will. There will not be documentaries on these bands, or even headline news comebacks. Not the end of the world, but somehow a shame. We all love a story. A legend.

It was the legendary David Bowie who lit up 2013 with Where Are We Now? I have to say I was genuinely excited. The cover of the NME this week (believed to be Bowie in a Gazza mask), has people heading to the shops, who haven’t seen a copy of the magazine since they lost their hair and stopped wearing sports shoes. The cover image was different, intriguing. Bowie genuinely seems to be doing something relevant to ‘now’ and ‘then’, a feat I acknowledge is difficult these days.

This is Bowie we’re talking about, a man in his mid sixties. So, where are the modern equivalents rising up like rotten mushrooms to punch the establishment – and Bowie fans – on their bloated old noses? Indie? Well, I would venture that this term was always a misnomer but these days it’s virtually irrelevant.

The bands that grace the pages of internet music titles and NME are trying too hard to be accepted into the mainstream hole opened by the likes of Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol. A lot of the younger names on the increasingly ‘greyer’ NME cast list are just too nice. Too slick. I would venture that much of it is actually pop. Do they still punch interviewers? I doubt it.

The big music news of late, has virtually revolved around the old school. Kraftwerk, Led Zep, Stones Roses, Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. Nick Cave’s latest is a belter, Johnny Marr is on the up, New Order are back, as is the godfather himself Dylan. Bowie has not been this popular since the early days of hair gel. The axis of power is tipping. A grey dawn is rising with names from the past appearing far more intriguing than a 4X4 of floppy-haired nice boys yodeling at their deck shoes.

PA

'Modern indie acts that look like they’ve stepped off the pages of an ASOS catalogue'

So how can young hipsters possibly compete with the rise of the old cronies? Well, for starters they could try and learn something from them.

YOUNG BANDS TAKE NOTE!

Rock and roll debauchery is of course a cliché but still, no debauchery is head-stabbingly dull. Modern bands are too healthy. Work hard, yes, but party too. Build a legend. Your public wants to sip from the overflowing goblet of fame, and they expect you to do it for them.

Bowie spent most of the early 70s existing on a daily diet of red peppers, milk and ten grams of cocaine and produced his finest albums on it, and immediately after. Had something to write about I guess.

Maybe experience ‘real life’? There are a lot more middle class bands around, and although there’s always been a sizeable portion of musicians who can name red wines and foreign cheeses from 50 paces, it’s never been rebellious. Lou Reed was waiting for a drug dealer not the man from Ocado.

Oscar-winning Searching For Sugar Man featured singer Rodriguez who had actually lived on the streets, and post career took up labouring on Detroit building sites, giving him an honest insight into life, yeah? Not Mumford & Sons hanging around tea rooms, dipping their smooth fingers into pots of hummus whilst chuckling like Beano-created folk stars.

Say something controversial now and again. Why are you here? What are you telling us? The Smiths were masters of delivering an alternative lifestyle, and were more or less ordering young people to take up arms against teachers, butchers and… hairdressers. Stand for something, whether it’s anarchy like the Pistols or boozing like Oasis. Monitor what’s going on outside your window – there’s a recession apparently – rather than Googling your name and noting how many hits your website has received since brunch.

Do something mad. The Who smashed instruments and urinated on a giant stone. Ozzy bit the heads off bats and doves not tuna baguettes. Instead of hanging out with Nick Grimshaw, eat a live horse on stage, or at least disable your Twitter account. But do something we can write about! Get abducted by aliens or dance around a pyramid in a wet suit shouting ‘Hail Satan!’

Enjoy your work. Some of these chaps and chapesses look like the wind has caught them mid-grump. Happy Mondays were a right laugh and thus were great live and in the studio. Alternatively, if want to do ‘moody’ you have to actually mean it. Think about Nick Cave writing about murdering his wife, not “Where’s Mummy? She said she’d give me a lift home from Josh’s.”

Image is still powerful and many modern bands look TOO good. Go against the grain, like Johnny Cash in black, or Bowie’s cat suits. Modern indie acts that look like they’ve stepped off the pages of an ASOS catalogue with tidy beards, doe eyes and pointy shoes straight out of Hogwarts. Stop posing for imaginary Gap campaigns and taking bites out of airbrushed apples. Get some dungarees, have a perm, or scissor kick the air in painted clogs – just check Noel Fielding hasn’t done it first.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and rather than wallpapering our minds with your material, keep some of it back. Be elusive. You hear and see Foals every time you turn on the radio or flip open a laptop. Yet Bowie’s Starman appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1972, to a culturally malnourished British public, was nuclear. The Clash turned down Top Of The Pops, Prince spent decades whispering and the Manics achieved legendary status only once Richie Edwards had done a bunk. In an information age, hold back the supply and create demand. Go and live in a cave and grow your toenails long (are you listening Chris Martin?).

Make your material ‘good’. This is the hardest bit, yet crucially, the most important. “Always give the public what they never realised they needed,” was the advice from John Walters, the legendary producer of John Peel’s radio show. So ignore record companies and put your own music out there, how you want it. The motives of record companies are more desperate than ever and they never actually liked risk. Or music. Ask a businessman what they want and you’re signing your own death warrant. What they want, is what is already popular.

Does that help? If not, maybe type ‘Bowie’ into Google or something, we’re off for a smoothie.